


champagne problems

by lolathatch



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott, Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Champagne Problems, F/M, Lost Love, Pining, Regret, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolathatch/pseuds/lolathatch
Summary: "Sometimes you just don't know the answer 'til someone's on their knees and asks you." Alone in her childhood home, Jo wonders if she made the right choice.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March, Theodore Laurence/Josephine March
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	champagne problems

She booked the night train for a reason. She knew couldn’t stay in Concord. Even if it meant leaving sweet Beth. She was determined to be something other than Jo March, determined to be somewhere other than this place that constantly taunted her.

Childhood was over now. The evergreen trees weren’t quite as bright. The post office in the woods looked silly, a remnant of a time when things weren’t complicated.

He loved her. Why couldn’t she love him the way he wanted? He looked so pathetic that day on the hill. She had never seen Teddy so fragile, so delicate.

 _Your heart was glass and I dropped it_ , Jo thought.

She cursed her callousness. He would recover, she had thought. He would go off to Italy, enjoying the sights and tastes. Drinking and gallivanting and doing all the things Jo was sure she would do if she were a man.

_Champagne problems._

-

And now here she was, in Concord again. Alone with the same evergreen trees, the childish post office sitting abandoned in the woods.

She was truly alone. Beth, the invisible string tying her to childhood, was gone. Amy, in typical Amy fashion, avoided it all. Jo had to be the girl who didn’t go to Paris, who picked up the pieces.

“Say yes, and let’s be happy together,” his desperate voice cut into her thoughts.

Could she have been happy with him? There were days she believed she could. Sometimes you just don’t know the answer until someone’s on their knees and asks you. If he got on his knees again, would she answer differently?

_I still don’t know the answer._

She wore his vest that day. She watched him go and left the vest on the hill, as if she were shedding the pieces of him. Jo knew she could never tell Meg. She couldn’t stand the idea of overhearing her and Marmee speaking in hushed tones, lamenting over what could have been.

She could already hear Meg’s pitying voice: “She would have made such a lovely bride.”

 _What a shame she’s fucked in the head_ , Jo added silently.

She was so lonely. When she did it, she imagined Teddy would be the crestfallen one, while she would move on and make something more of herself. She wasn’t cut out to be a bride, a society wife.

 _I’m only Jo_.

-

“Jo. Wake up.”

It wasn’t an illusion. He was there in the attic, the place where they once decked the halls that was now reduced to a relic.

She could change everything. Correct her mistake. Never leave him again.

“There’s no getting my wife out of their clutches.”

She’d told him he’d find the real thing instead. An accomplished woman who adored him the way she couldn’t. And he did.

It would always be Amy. Jo shred the tapestry and Amy patched it up. Of course it was Amy. She imagined them dancing together in Paris. How Amy would never leave his side like Jo would.

_And you won’t remember all my champagne problems._

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick little songfic to get me back in the writing mood.


End file.
